Multi Table Poker Tournament Guide
Most internet poker rooms offer multi-table tournaments which can range from 18 players and onwards. For the sake of this guide we’re going to be dealing with strategy for tournaments with 45+ players. When you’re playing a multi-table tournament you need to have patience and play a strong game because one mistake can cost you your entire game.
In the beginning of a multi-table tournament you need to make sure you play tight. Most of the other players will probably end up playing loose poker in the beginning of the tournament because they’re trying to establish there chip stack, but you don’t want to get involved with that. You should wait until you have a good hand and then maximize the amount of chips you win in those hands by attacking the loose players on your table.
When you play poker online and make it further in the tournament and you have a nice stack in front of you, you can begin loosening up your game a bit. The middle stages of the tournament will typically make or break your chances of making a run for the win. You should start playing hands preflop that aren’t raised when you have connectors or suited cards. You might not hit your hand, but if you hit it once then it’s worth calling the big blind preflop to try and hit your hand. There is no point just sitting tight in the middle of the tournament because the blinds are going up and you need to keep moving your stack up because the other players will be doing the same.
As you get closer to the end of the poker tournament and the money positions you should begin to start tightening up your game again. It’s important that you play tight near the end especially if you have a good chip stack because you don’t want to take any risks before you’re guaranteed some money. If you’ve made it this far into the tournament it’s painful to lose right before the money positions so you don’t want to get beaten.
Once you have made it to the money positions then you can either continue playing tight poker or you can start loosening up your game again. Loosening up your poker game is ideal near the end of the tournament because chips are going to be moving around the table a lot again and you’ll want to get in on some of the action to make a push for the final table. It’s important to make the money positions, but typically you need to finish in the top ten to win any serious return on your investment so make sure that you don’t play to tight near the end and watch your stack dwindle.
As you can see you really need to be able to adapt your free poker game in minutes if you want to be successful at playing multi-table tournaments. You also need to have patience and don’t rush your game because it isn’t going to make the tournament finish any quicker, if anything it’ll finish your tournament early and that’s it.